Candle
by RaineArilan
Summary: The scent of lavender. It meant only one thing. Danger! He was up and running in an instant. He had to move fast. The scent on the wind might have given him a head start but she was spry for her age. Spry and deadly. Cracky slice of life. T for language.


A/N: Prompt 01-06. I hit this prompt almost at the same time I was watching a stand up comedian named Demitri Martin and he had this joke about always keeping scented candles around his house but never burning them so he would always know when/if a fire broke out. The line was something like "I wake up—_lavender! Danger!_ And I run for the door." Thus… candle.

* * *

The scent of lavender. It meant only one thing. _Danger!_ He was up and running in an instant, solid earth passing away beneath his bare feet. He had to move fast. The scent on the wind might have given him a head start but she was spry for her age. Spry and deadly.

"If you love your life swallow it!" he shouted, bursting through the door into the back shed. "Swallow it! Swallow it!"

Fred looked up from the oddly misshapen candle in his hands, adrenaline rising with the alarm in his face. "What? Why?"

"She's coming!" George pressed himself against the inside of the shed door but knew it wouldn't help. The Great Wall of China wouldn't have been enough of a defense. "And if you won't then give it here and I will. Better only one of us dies, but if she catches us with that thing we're both goners."

"_Mum?_ Oh sweet turnips!" Fred had finally caught on and even the sluggish bubbles spilling up the side of the candle didn't stop him from stuffing the whole thing in his mouth and chewing frantically.

"George Weasley, you open that door this instant or I will open it for you!" the Great Matriarch of Pain bellowed shrilly from just outside the shed. George flinched and looked at his twin who began trying to swallow the sodden, magical mass.

"C_oming_, mother!" George caroled, trying to buy time.

"Oh I'm sure you are, just as soon as you finish destroying the evidence of _whatever_ it is you're working on in there. Well, I won't have it, do you hear me? I won't. Now open this door, this _instant_!"

George dithered for exactly three more seconds, trapped between the proverbial middle aged woman and his brother's throat muscles. But just as he thought perhaps he ought to duck outside and get it over with, using his own life to buy Fred time, his twin gave one last, mighty, swallow and tossed him the thumbs up sign. Blowing out his breath, George whirled and hauled the door open in the very face of his mother who was standing, he noticed in horror, feet braced with her wand out.

Soooooo not a good sign.

"Good afternoon, mother dear," he said, attempting a cheerful recovery. "What can I do for you on so fine a day as this?"

Scowling fiercely she ducked past him, examining the cramped, dirty little room for anything out of place or… _altered_. Of course, unless one of the other boys had hidden something in here she wouldn't find anything. Too many destroyed projects and close calls had taught the twins to keep each part of their experiments separate. Like cells in a spy ring, each location only had so much to offer her in the way of supplies or finished product. After that thing with the turtles…. They were never going to let her get another whole project again. They had never quite managed to recreate the level of awesomeness in any of their subsequent tries. Fred stilled cried sometimes when he saw a turtle, stuffed or otherwise.

"Alright you two, where is it?" she demanded, after her first circuit of the room came up fruitless.

"Where is what, mummy?" Fred asked, his eyes wide with innocent confusion. Silently, George applauded his twin. Fred had always been better at that particular trick than him. Over the years, it might even be safe to say that he'd mastered it. Not that _anything_ was safe to say right about now.

"Oh don't. Just don't. I am well aware of the things you've gotten your brothers to pick up for you in Diagon Alley the past few weeks, each one thinking it was _so_ harmless." Mrs. Weasley waved a finger in Fred's face, seemingly oblivious to his fabulous rendition of an innocent person. "I know you are up to something and I _know_ that sooner or later I am going to find out what it is!"

George shrugged and spread his arms wide. "A woman so brilliant and gorgeous as you, of course you would, were such information in existence. And yet, alas…." He trailed off and shrugged again.

She rounded on him. "You are both grounded. All weekend. No flying. No fun."

"_Awww!_ But Mum!"

"No! No buts! You might have gotten away with it for now, but that doesn't mean I can't punish you for it."

"Well then, will it at least count as time served?" George asked, his gaze flickering over her shoulder to Fred, who was being far too quiet and looking a bit peaky. "I mean, if you were ever to find out anything we were, say, tinkering around with."

Her lips pinched just a teeny, tiny bit more, driving just a hint more white into their color scheme and George knew it was time to pack it in. There were lines and there were _lines_ and there were – Holy shit! – whatever _that_ look was on her face.

"Look," he said reasonably, "we could apologize, but you would know we wouldn't mean it and it would just make you more upset. You could stick around and look some more, but you wouldn't find anything and it would _still_ make you more upset. You could even punish us some more, but it wouldn't really make you feel any better now would it?"

"Come on, Mum," Fred spoke up, taking up his part of the verbal escape plan, "think about it. You leave now and you won't have wasted all sorts of time just working yourself up for nothing. And then for the next days and weeks we'll be trying to get back on your good side so you won't be mad."

"Flowers in the kitchen vase," George supplied.

"Candies on your nightstand," Fred put in.

"Sweeping the floor every night and rousting the rest of those tossers out of bed or out of the house whenever you want a bit of quiet. For a pair of creative blokes like us, the options are endless. Endless!"

"Wouldn't you like to encounter Endless: The Weasley Twin Experience just once in your life?" Fred took a possibly fatal risk then, reaching out and putting his hand on her arm.

And then, miracle of miracles, it happened.

She smiled.

Small, tight and not entirely pleased, perhaps, but a smile nonetheless. "Oh all right!" she huffed, shaking off Fred's hand in exasperation. She pointed her finger back and forth between them. "But it better be two weeks of your help and not one moment less!"

As one, they snapped to attention, hands flying up in a neat pair of salutes. "Aye, ma'am!"

"Good." She scowled. "And don't think you've gotten off either. I _will_ find out what it is you're up to."

Fred nodded. "Sooner or later you always do."

"Yes, ma'am," George put in.

Still angry, but within safer bounds now, The Goddess of Weasley stormed back out of the shed, slamming the door behind her. A moment later there was a second slam, most likely the back door unless another structure had been built within storming distance in the past five minutes.

"Whew." Fred blew out a breath and slumped forward over his workstation.

George looked over at his brother. "So, you think we should tell her?"

"Are you kidding? We do it and we're dead!" Fred shook his head then let out a massive hiccup. By the look of surprise on his face, it was probably a safe assumption to think he hadn't been expecting it. He hiccuped again, this time a slowly morphing bubble sliding out from between his lips. As it rose into the air, a pretty golden sparkle began to glow from the inside.

"Uh, mate," George grimaced at his favorite twin brother. "I hate to say it but you just might be dead anyway."

"Oh sod off!" Fred threw a halfhearted wave-of-annoyance in his direction, the tips of his ears and nose turning red.

"Can't do it, Freddikins. Somebody's gotta have something to tell the coroner." George dodged the far distant and inept blow by way of hopping up into a seat on the table behind him.

"Sod off," Fred muttered again. The scarlet coloring slowly crept down his cheeks as he hiccuped again and a new bubble, this one a more turquoise blue, drifted up to join its cousin.

"Oy. Did we mean to make it color-change?"

Three more hiccups and three more bubbles – orange, green and red – cut short any idea of a reply. "_Ahhh_!" Fred threw himself backwards on the dirt floor of the shed and firmly gave up.

"I didn't think so."

* * *

A/N: Was that utterly pointless? Why yes, yes it was. I think that was the point... which means it wasn't pointless. Ah the joys of the timetravel paradox. lol *waves*


End file.
